Tahani’s Grandson

Tamer Said Mostafa

August, 1999. Helwan, Egypt. While packing

for my return to America, I rest momentarily

on your lap, and patronize the plastic armchair

quivering under our collective weight.

We forgive its hysteria once the muezzin

announces an additional prayer in support of

the partial eclipse vanishing the governorate.

Before light returns, you stow a few gold trinkets

in my knapsack so I can run back upstairs,

swap them for your symphonic maps not yet

old enough to be ritualized in childhood.

When you pass the following summer, I can not

remember anything but a red hibiscus flower

stuck to the leather sole of your moccasin

that you liberate onto a baluster above.

Decades later, I excavate photographs

threadbare from their pilgrimage, and find you

in worship, embellishing each movement

from first takbir to taslim as if family,

and its schisms, is yours alone to suture.

The progression ends with you sitting cross-legged

atop a tassel-less rug that is a compass or perhaps

a sutrah towards hardship. Yet, both arms orbit

your alabaster-colored hijab like parables

and I sacrifice belief as only a fraction

of our lineage, what it means for my journey

to originate from you. After praying Fajr

amongst his homeland, my father facetimes me,

says that your noor is now mine to negotiate

whether I have faith or not, so long as I don’t

keep it all for myself.

TAMER SAID MOSTAFA is a therapist, poet, and storyteller from Stockton, California. His work has appeared in Guernica, Confrontation, Prairie Schooner, and Freezeray among others. Tamer is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, and a graduate of the Creative Writing program at University of California, Davis.